Cause they're also for grown-ups…

Marcel Marceau – “The Mask Maker”

In my previous post, we raised the discussion about “A clown and a suitcase…” We discussed what the definition of a clown is for us, from what material the suitcase could be made, how the suitcase could be and what the clown could have put inside the suitcase. This conversation reminded me one of the best performances of Marcel Marceau, the Master of all Mimes of all times, in “The Mask Maker”; a masterpiece that leaves you speechless….

Marcel Marceau, the little white-faced “Bip the Clown”, was the one who passed the art of mime and pantomime and achieved to spread this silent form of art, “The art of silence” or “L’art du silence” all over the world. Marcel Marceau had the great talent to create characters that each one of them could tell a little story. Through “the sound of silence”, the enthralled audience could listen to his moves, read his gestures, hear his incredibly flexible hands, and observe if his rubber mouth was going up in a smile or down in a frown.

In “The Mask Maker”, Marcel Marceau explores the full range of human emotions; the narrative gestures, the slight adjustment of body stance, the amazingly facial expressions signalize an alphabet of human emotions one right after the other. The Marcel Marceau’s character flips imaginary masks on and off his face going in an instant from laughter to tears, from joy to sadness, from happiness to misery. At the end the mask maker can’t remove the laughing mask. The cold big smile of his face becomes a shouting, a scream, a cry, a yell…